There was plenty of food, of a kind. The supper, at the close of the day was a brief function, but brutal as it was brief. It was something of a shock, the first night we were in camp, but at the close of my first day's work I found myself on a level with the grossest. The finer instincts were blunted or gone and I was in the clutch of a hunger like that of the jungle, where might and cunning rule. At a signal from the cook, we rushed in, crushed by main force into a seat, seized whatever was nearest and began. Scarcely a word was spoken—heads down, hands and jaws at top speed. The disgusting spectacle lasted but a few minutes, then up and out to smoke and talk.
Beside me sat a strong, powerfully built German boy, who joked about the age of the pork for supper.
"What you guff about?" the burly steward asked.
"Schmell, py gee—its tick mit bad schmell!"
"Vell, you shut your —— maut or I smash your —— head, see?"
The boy laughed, then the steward removed his plate and refused to give any more. Nobody took any notice. We were too busy and too brutally selfish to interfere. The steward was the camp bully and the men were afraid of him. They must not even laugh at his provisions. We had pork for breakfast, we took pork chops to the mines for dinner, and the staple article—the standby—of every supper was pork. Pigs in Alabama are like turnips in Scotland—there are no property rights in them. They breed and litter in the tall dog-fennel; they root around the shanties and cover the landscape.
"Who owns these pigs?" I asked old Ransom Pope, a Negro.
"One an' anoder!" he said.
The gullies and the weeds were full of them and the steward found them easy and cheap feeding.
"You come yere for breakfast to-morrow an' I smash your dam head!" the steward said to the boy, as we left the dining room. There was no reply. Each man went his way. They were tired—too tired to think. Though a stranger to even the taste of liquor, I had an intense craving for it and it seemed as if I had used it all my life. An hour after supper, I lay down on my sodden pile and went to sleep.